Agricultural drone market to increase usage in field mapping and crop scouting applications

Thursday, 16 November 2017 07:28

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Agriculture drones is use of drones in farming that helps farmers to monitor crop growth and increase crop production

In 2015, the agriculture drone market was valued at US$193.4mn globally. Agriculture drones are used for collecting high-quality data and its data processing tools are less expensive and easy to use. The use of advance technologies and its increasing awareness among farmers will propel the growth of market.

The advantages such as efficient water usage, fertilizers and land, better productivity will drive the market of Agriculture drones. The various capabilities such as imaging capabilities, sensors, and better materials will lift the market.

The hybrid agriculture drone is expected to portray the highest growth over the forecast period.

The market share of Hybrid drones is expected to be highest by 2022. The drones takes snapshot of different sectors of field that provides crucial and important data regarding crop, soil and yields in order to assist in crop management. Agriculture drones are emerging as a lucrative sector due to its small size, low cost and easy use.

The UAV-based start-ups are booming due to its application in wide areas. The start-ups are focusing on providing hardware and software services that will cover about 80 per cent of market. The Universities, technical institute and different organizations are organising various programs to provide guidance for operating UAV, which is expected to propel market. Government regulation and lack of trained pilot in some regions may act as barrier to market growth.

The market, based on products is fragmented into rotary blade, fixed wing and hybrid. The emerging need to carry heavy payloads will help fixed-wing UAVs to dominate the industry over forecast period.

The capability of hybrid UAV such as covering long distance will help them to grow with a CAGR of 40 per cent from 2016 to 2024. Compared to manned aircraft, the UAV are capable to monitor field areas with ease which will have positive impact on market growth.

The crop scouting application is projected to witness a significant growth over the projected period

The Application segment is divided into Variable rate application, field mapping, crop scouting and others. In 2015, among these, the field mapping segment dominated the business in terms of revenue. Farmers striving hard to increase productivity of crops by making use of advance technology is expected to drive field mapping Segment.

The drones are capable of spray fertilisers accurately without causing any problem and can act as important factor in growth of crop scouting segment in next seven years. In addition, the development of normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) is expected to help crop scouting to contribute more in market. NVDI makes use of near-infrared sensor that is use to capture data that cannot be captured by human eye.

The Asia Pacific region is expected to witness a significant growth from 2016 to 2024

Asia Pacific agriculture drone industry will have a compelling growth among different regions over the forecast period. The emerging economies in these regions are constantly investing in R&D to make efficient and advanced drones. Different companies are developing economical and efficient UAV that has vast applications in farming sector.